The latest case involving the legal parameters of online speech before the justices concerns a Pennsylvania man sentenced to 50 months in prison after being convicted on four counts of the interstate communication of threats. Defendant Anthony Elonis' 2010 Facebook rant concerned attacks on an elementary school, his estranged wife, and even law enforcement.

"That's it, I've had about enough/ I'm checking out and making a name for myself/ Enough elementary schools in a ten mile radius/ to initiate the most heinous school shooting ever imagined/ and hell hath no fury like a crazy man in a Kindergarten class/ the only question is … which one?" read one of Elonis' posts.

Elonis' case is a bit more complicated. For one, Elonis is 30 years old. While growing older doesn't necessarily make you immune from stupidity, the expectations are a bit higher in terms of online discourse. It's a little harder to claim you're running on the same high-octane concoction of hormones and blood displacement that teenage boys are. Not that all youthful indiscretions are excusable, but given that age group's tendency towards disproportionate drama in all things, it does make it more understandable.

In addition, Elonis' statements were directed at a variety of targets, any of which would seem to be a viable recipient for his anger. Not only did Elonis mention shooting up a school (specifically a kindergarten), but he also apparently had dire "plans" for his wife and local law enforcement. Again, the post-Sandy Hook law enforcement/judicial mentality further clouds the issue, raising the question that if Elonis had left out the part about the school shooting, would he still be facing 30 months in prison? (Of course, threatening law enforcement tends to create just as much of a legal mess, usually one far worse than simply threatening your estranged spouse does…)

But the odds are fairly long that the Supreme Court will find the ability to carry out the threat matters as much as the perception of everyone else but the person making the statement.

Only one federal appeals court has sided with Elonis' contention that the authorities must prove that the person who made the threat actually meant to carry it out. Eight other circuit courts of appeal, however, have ruled that the standard is whether a "reasonable person" would conclude the threat was real.

This long shot is also reliant on another long shot: that the administration will support this appeal. A similar case involving an Iraq War vet was greeted by the White House with a written petition asking the Supreme Court to reject the case. These two obstacles make it unlikely that the judicial system will start treating so-called "threats" any differently than they have in the past. And it's a very long past. David Kravets at Ars Technica points out that the statute being applied to these cases originated in 1932.

There are legitimate threats and these are rightly not treated as free speech. But there are others that are treated as legitimate threats even when there's no evidence the person uttering them has the ability, much less the intention to back up their unfortunate statements. Applying a 1932 statute to the wide open discourse platform that is the internet is doing little more than putting loudmouths and idiots in jail. Those who mean actual harm to others generally don't enlighten their future targets via Twitter, Facebook and forum posts.

By all means, potential threats should be investigated, but the courts need to come to the realization that these statements cannot be entirely robbed of their context (including intent and ability) and presented "as is" to the hypothetical "reasonable person." Reasonable people are completely capable of understanding that not every hurtful word can actuallyhurt someone, nor do they believe every "threat" is the sign of impending danger. Not only should the statute be reconsidered, but so should the court's "reasonable person" ideal.

from the all-hail-the-earth dept

What with the democratization of filmmaking technology, we've seen a relative explosion in films, as production has been opened to a whole population that would otherwise be unable to produce their wares. This, by and large, is a good thing. The barriers to entry have been lowered, streaming sites like YouTube provide an avenue for distribution, and we all get as many cute puppy videos as we can possibly handle. The flipside is that there are some jackasses out there who put out terrible crap. The whole Innocence Of Muslimsfiasco is but one example, with actors reportedly being duped, controversial producers who remained in the shadows, and a finished product that would be most at home in the nearest dumpster. The technology is a great thing, but that doesn't mean there aren't pitfalls, and those lending their names to films and shows need to be careful about what they're getting into.

Kate Mulgrew—best known as that show’s Captain Janeway—has lent her familiar voice to The Principle, an upcoming documentary about the belief that the Earth is the center of the universe. The film has been in the works for a while, though it’s mostly been as ignored as those who have propagated the theory of Geocentrism past the 17th century. In a post on her Facebook page, the actress addressed that discussion, denying any involvement beyond being a hired gun who maybe should have asked a few more questions:

"I understand there has been some controversy about my participation in a documentary called THE PRINCIPLE. Let me assure everyone that I completely agree with the eminent physicist Lawrence Krauss, who was himself misrepresented in the film, and who has written a succinct rebuttal in SLATE. I am not a geocentrist, nor am I in any way a proponent of geocentrism. More importantly, I do not subscribe to anything Robert Sungenis has written regarding science and history and, had I known of his involvement, would most certainly have avoided this documentary. I was a voice for hire, and a misinformed one, at that. I apologize for any confusion that my voice on this trailer may have caused."

Lawrence Krauss, should you not know, is a famous physicist that would push the idea of geocentrism as much as he'd claim the moon was made of cheese (it's not by the way...). He published an article in Slate stating that he's unaware of how he ended up in the film, but it probably resulted from filmmakers pulling clips of him from around the internet and editing them in such a way as to make it sound like he supported the theory. Krauss, being smart, refuses to dignify the film with any legal action.

The man behind the film is Robert Sungenis, who has dedicated his life to arguing for geocentrism, among other crackpot nonsense.

Sungenis—who has a Ph.D. in religious studies from “a private distance-learning institution in Republic of Vanuatu”—has used those credentials to establish a career as a leading proponent of Geocentrism, based on an understanding of astrophysics drawn from that most esteemed of scientific manuals, the Bible. In addition to denying anyone can prove the Earth revolves around the sun, he’s also well known for denying anyone can prove 6 million Jews died during the Holocaust. He’s also claimed that Jews are in league with Satan to take over the planet.

Delightful. In any case, it would be very easy and understandable for Mulgrew and Krauss to be royally pissed over this and pursue legal action. In fact, in light of the recent ruling in favor of Cindy Garcia, Mulgrew may even have a copyright claim to make, as ridiculous as that is. What a wonderful world of litigation Judge Kozinski has opened for us all, despite his proclamation on how rarely his ruling could be enforced. We're mere weeks away, yet here's another situation in which an actress who should have done her homework can point to Cindy Garcia's victory and claim copyright. Fortunately, Mulgrew seems to understand what Kozinski did not: that she was a "voice for hire" and that a good deal of the responsibility for knowing what she was lending her voice (and thus credibility) to is her own.

I'd argue that a little public refuting without any legal action, which would only serve to put The Principle in the headlines, and a more proactive approach to vetting the material before committing to a project is all that's required. After all, it's not like any substantial number of people will take this film seriously. As long as the public knows some of those involved were duped, that should be the end of it.

Los Angeles police officers tampered with voice recording equipment in dozens of patrol cars in an effort to avoid being monitored while on duty, according to records and interviews.

An inspection by Los Angeles Police Department investigators found about half of the estimated 80 cars in one South L.A. patrol division were missing antennas, which help capture what officers say in the field. The antennas in at least 10 more cars in nearby divisions had also been removed.

These antennas, linked to both in-car camera systems and officers' body mics, helped increase the recording range. Removing the antennas didn't completely prevent recordings, but it did make it harder to pick up officers' voices once they entered buildings or ventured further away from the receivers located in the vehicles. According to the manufacturer, the antenna boosts the effective range of the body-worn transmitters by roughly a third.

When you're watching yourself (something prompted by a decade-long DOJ investigation of the LAPD), you have this luxury. No cop's going to turn in another cop who removes an antenna or otherwise tampers with the department-imposed oversight measures. A whole lot of time elapsed between when the tampering was discovered and when it was finally brought to the attention of those charged with monitoring the monitoring.

Members of the Police Commission, which oversees the department, were not briefed about the problem until months later. In interviews with The Times, some commissioners said they were alarmed by the officers' attempts to conceal what occurred in the field, as well as the failure of department officials to come forward when the problem first came to light.

"On an issue like this, we need to be brought in right away," commission President Steve Soboroff said. "This equipment is for the protection of the public and of the officers. To have people who don't like the rules to take it upon themselves to do something like this is very troubling."

This is very troubling, and while it's nice of the Police Commission to admit that fact, this tampering points to the officers' underlying resentment of nearly any method of monitoring or control. Many police officers don't like being recorded in public by citizens, so it stands to reason they don't much care for being recorded by the department itself. Hence, antennas go missing.

Those who are supposed to be making sure the police officers aren't becoming a law unto themselves seem to have little interest in attacking the mindset that leads to this sort of behavior.

"We took the situation very seriously. But because the chances of determining who was responsible was so low we elected to … move on," [LAPD Commander Andrew] Smith said, adding that it cost the department about $1,500 to replace all the antennas.

Too hard, won't try. That's the standard being applied to the LAPD. Instead of making an effort, band aids are being applied. Officers are now supposed to sign off that the antennas are in place at the beginning and end of their shift. This leaves a gaping hole in coverage (otherwise known as the shift itself) should officers decide they'd rather not be recorded. This hole has received its own band aid.

To guard against officers removing the antennas during their shifts, Tingirides said he requires patrol supervisors to make unannounced checks on cars.

Great, but considering there are many more officers than supervisors, and considering the fact that it took months before the missing antennas were brought to the attention of the Police Commission, who really believes this is going to stop officers from disabling antennas during work hours?

Oh, Commander Smith believes.

Since the new protocols went into place, only one antenna has been found missing, Smith said.

Well, that's the sort of result you can expect from self-reporting. Sure, a few cops may get a verbal handslap from a supervisor if they happen to come across a missing antenna, but it's a safe bet these supervisors aren't any happier about their men and women being recorded while on duty. Because if they did care, it never would have gotten to the point where nearly half of the antennas in a single division went missing.

With these cops being charged with keeping department-issued antennas present and accounted for, some have opted to go a different route to avoid being recorded.

Last month, the department conducted a follow-up audit and found that dozens of the transmitters worn by officers in Southeast Division were missing or damaged.

This time there's actually an investigation being opened, months after the original antenna abuse was uncovered by an internal audit (but hidden from the Police Commission). Judging from what's happened previously, there's very little reason to believe this will lead to the ouster of bad cops who don't like accountability. A few scapegoats may be offered up to calm both the public and department oversight, but if a ten-year investigation by the DOJ failed to bring about the sort of systemic change needed, it's highly unlikely an internal investigation will result in anything better.

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

People eat a lot of weird things: bugs, fungus, all kinds of fermented stuff. However, the craving for dirt is a real phenomenon, and people do actually eat various kinds of dirt. There's some evidence that our ancient ancestors -- 2 million years ago -- (aka homo habilis) ate dirt. Dirt is even sold for eating in the USA right now. If you'd like to learn more about eating dirt, here you go.

from the of-course-they-do dept

Back in December, we noted that the House Judiciary Committee had approved an unfortunately watered-down, anti-patent troll bill. It was better than nothing, but we hoped that the Senate would approve a much stronger version. For a while it seemed like that was likely to happen, but... those who abuse patents are pretty damn powerful. Even those who have been hit by patent trolls in the past, like Apple and Microsoft, have decided to join forces in lobbying against meaningful patent reform. They've been pushing to water down the Senate's bill, taking out nearly everything that would make the bill useful -- and it appears that they're succeeding.

Over the past few weeks, we've been hearing time and time again about an expected manager's amendment to the bill in the Senate, along with a markup. There was a brief attempt at a markup, but everything keeps getting pushed off. A few more days, then a few more days, as Senate insiders insist that a "deal" is being made. The latest is that things have been pushed off for a few more weeks, as the patent abusers have been throwing their weight around quite a bit in the Senate. A manager's amendment from Senator Leahy is still expected, but no one is quite sure what will be in it. From talking to a bunch of folks with knowledge of what's going on, the general consensus is that while some are still optimistic, it seems quite likely that most of the useful stuff to stop patent abuse will get tossed out.

Of course, this is just history repeating itself. The America Invents Act, which was a patent reform bill that was fought over for nearly seven years. In its initial form, like the latest attempts at patent reform, there were some good ideas (mixed in with the bad). But as the patent abusers ramped up their lobbying effort, more and more of the good ideas got stripped out of the bill. After seven years of trying, the final America Invents Act was a shell of what it had been, and did basically nothing to stop patent abuse. And that's why we're back to square one with this latest attempt at patent reform.

But, tragically, it looks like a spineless Congress is falling for the lobbying of patent abusers, and there's a decent chance that they'll move forward with an essentially worthless attempt at patent reform, meaning that actual innovators -- the kind who deal with patent abusers every day -- will have to go back to Congress yet again and highlight how badly they mucked things up this time.

Or, you know, Congress could grow a damn spine, do what's right, and stop patent abuse.

The Department of Justice was already investigating the department before the two latest shootings. The first involved a homeless person "illegally" camping, an infraction apparently punishable by death in New Mexico. The officers claimed the man came at them with knives, but video clearly shows him surrendering and attempting to walk down to them before being hit with a concussion grenade, followed shortly by several bullets. As for the danger poised by the knives he was carrying, the 20-30 feet between him and the officers at the beginning of the video (not to mention the difference in altitude) makes this much less of a threat than the reports indicated.

While the city of Albuquerque was still digesting the news of this apparently unjustified shooting, the APD shot another person. The police claimed he fired at them (and they did recover a gun at the scene) but video shot by an onlooker appears to show the man holding something (gun or cellphone) to his own head before shots ring out and he drops to the ground.

Officers use deadly force in an unconstitutional manner. Our investigation looked at officer-involved shootings that resulted in fatalities from 2009 to 2012 and found that a majority of them were unreasonable and violated the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution. We found that officers used deadly force against people who did not pose an immediate threat of death or serious harm to officers or others, and against people who posed a threat only to themselves. In fact, sometimes it was the conduct of the officers themselves that heightened the danger and escalated the need to use force.

We found that officers use other types of less lethal force, especially electronic control weapons, or Tasers, in an unconstitutional manner. Our investigation looked beyond just the use of deadly force and found a significant number of improper uses of force in our review of over 200 force reports generated between 2009 and early 2013. We found that officers routinely fired their Tasers, which discharge 50,000 volts of electricity, against people who were passively resisting and non-threatening or who were unable to comply with orders due to their mental state. Indeed, we found that encounters between police officers and persons with mental illness or in crisis too frequently resulted in a use of force or a higher level of force than necessary.

The remarks run on for much longer, noting the steps that will be taken to put the APD back in compliance with the Constitution and temper its officers' tendency to apply as much force as possible in a majority of situations. However, Samuels also takes the time to pat the heads of a police force so out of control the government was forced to step in.

To the women and men of the Albuquerque Police Department, we know your work is difficult and that you face dangers, known and unknown, when you hit the streets every day to keep this city safe. We recognize that many of you are dedicated public servants who wear your badge with distinction. We do not intend our findings today to mean that you must needlessly risk your lives or safety. You must come home safely to your family and loved ones.

This is what Scott Greenfield refers to as the "First Rule of Policing:" make it home safe. Even the DOJ follows it, apparently. But this should be a goal, not a priority. The "dedicated officers" know they're putting themselves in a dangerous position by taking the job. This doesn't give them permission to do whatever it takes to save their own lives.

Firemen don't just walk away from a fire if it looks life-threatening. Soldiers aren't told they can indiscriminately open fire if things feel a bit sketchy. Airline pilots aren't encouraged to jettison planes full of people (or over populated areas) in order to assure they "come home safely." Any other person taking a job that's potentially life-threatening assumes the risks. Cops somehow don't. And they use this "rule" as a justification for swift, thoughtless reactions that result in teens carrying Wii controllers getting shot and homeless schizophrenics being beaten to death.

By adding this disclaimer, Samuels partially absolves the APD of all of its wrongdoing. "You did what you had to do to survive." That attitude isn't going to fix anything and as long as police officers are encouraged to view their own safety as paramount, excessive force will continue to be applied.

from the abusive-powers-gorging-on-self-induced-paranoia dept

Photography is the new "driving while black." Not that the original "driving while black" has actually vanished, what with New York City making "walking while black" the equivalent of reasonable suspicion, but now people of all races, even those normally somewhat immune to harassment, can join in on the "fun" of low-level oppression.

Mr. Linkhorn and Ms. Fraser were in Lima covering a Ford Motor Co. news conference at the automaker’s plant there. Afterward, they went to shoot photos of businesses in the area for future use, including the tank plant, which is also known as the Joint Systems Manufacturing Center.

The reporters were at the entry portions of the plant, in an area where no fence or gate restricted access, according to the complaint. They did not pass a guard hut, which is about 30 feet from Buckeye Road.

The Lima, OH tank plant is well known and has been photographed before. The company makes no secret about what it manufactures, having placed this right in front of its plant.

But because all things, even photography of visible structures, inevitably lead to terrorism, security at the Lima plant decided to step in and stop the two Blade employees from gathering any more "intel."

Blade reporter Tyrel Linkhorn and photographer Jetta Fraser were detained March 28 by military security outside the plant and had cameras confiscated and pictures deleted.

This alone would step outside the boundaries set by the Constitution, but the security officers went even further, harassing the photographer by making various comments about her (perceived) lack of femininity, including referring to her using masculine pronouns and offering to "go under her bra."

The lawsuit claims Ms. Fraser and Mr. Linkhorn's First, Fourth, and Fifth Amendment rights were deprived, as were their rights under the First Amendment Privacy Protection Act.

"At all material times, Plaintiffs Fraser and Linkhorn were present in places that were open to the public and in which Plaintiffs had a lawful right to be," the lawsuit states. "At all material times, Plaintiffs Fraser and Linkhorn were engaged in fully lawful and constitutionally protected conduct, observing and photographing subjects that were and are open to public view and that Plaintiffs had full legal and constitutional rights to observe and photograph."

As is noted in the lawsuit, everything photographed could be seen from a public road. You can see satellite photography of the plant via Google Maps, not to mention closer looks via Street View. None of this has been redacted by government request. Details on buildings, including interior structures, are listed in a 1984 "Historic American Engineering Record" produced and made public by the contractor itself. Much of what's contained is now outdated, but what's included in this public report was current as of 1980, four years prior to its release.

An image search for "Lima Army Tank Plant" brings up a host of current photos, many of which show the inside of the building, something that would be vastly more sensitive than anything obtained by a photographer located outside the boundaries of the plant itself.

Despite all of this info being readily available, plant security allegedly named the following as the impetus for its seizure of the camera and deletion of photos.

Ms. Fraser said that an officer told her that taking pictures of the plant’s power supply that is visible from the street raised the “suspicion of terrorism.”

Much like the DHS and its useless Fusion Centers, everyone in the military-industrial complex (along with the intelligence community in general) is buying into the lie that photographing visible structures is "terrorism." If these publicly-viewable buildings pose so much of a threat simply by being observed, maybe security officers should stop harassing photographers and throw a few tarps over the sensitive structures or something.

from the well-that's-comforting dept

Update: The NSA has denied the Bloomberg report, briefly stating that the agency "was not aware of the recently identified Heartbleed vulnerability until it was made public." We'll continue to update as more information emerges.

While it's not news that the NSA hunts down and utilizes vulnerabilities like this, the extreme nature of Heartbleed is going to draw more scrutiny to the practice than ever before. As others have noted, failing to reveal the bug so it could be fixed is contrary to at least part of the agency's supposed mission:

Ordinary Internet users are ill-served by the arrangement because serious flaws are not fixed, exposing their data to domestic and international spy organizations and criminals, said John Pescatore, director of emerging security trends at the SANS Institute, a Bethesda, Maryland-based cyber-security training organization.

“If you combine the two into one government agency, which mission wins?” asked Pescatore, who formerly worked in security for the NSA and the U.S. Secret Service. “Invariably when this has happened over time, the offensive mission wins.”

There is, in fact, a massive hypocrisy here: the default refrain of NSA apologists is that all these questionable things they do are absolutely necessary to protect Americans from outside threats, yet they leave open a huge security hole that is just as easily exploited by foreign entities. Or consider the cybersecurity bill CISPA, which was designed to allow private companies to share network security information with the intelligence community, and vice versa, supposedly to assist in detecting and fixing security holes and cyber attacks of various kinds. But, especially after this revelation about Heartbleed, can there be any doubt that the intelligence community is far more interested in using backdoors than it is in closing them?

from the getting-worse-and-worse dept

Every few days, more details leak from the Senate's $40 million, 6,300 page report on the CIA's torture program. We'd already heard about how the torture program turned up no useful info and how the CIA lied to Congress about it (pretending information gleaned from other places was obtained via torture, when the truth was it wasn't). We've also heard about how the CIA's torture practices went beyond the (already too high) levels approved by the DOJ and CIA leadership. The folks over at McClatchy have another batch of details, repeating the revelation from last week that the report details how the torture program went beyond its "legal authority" and also detailing how it was used on many more people than the CIA has admitted to in the past:

The report also found that the spy agency failed to keep an accurate account of the number of individuals it held, and that it issued erroneous claims about how many it detained and subjected to the controversial interrogation methods. The CIA has said that about 30 detainees underwent the so-called enhanced interrogation techniques.

The CIA’s claim “is BS,” said a former U.S. official familiar with evidence underpinning the report, who asked not to be identified because the matter is still classified. “They are trying to minimize the damage. They are trying to say it was a very targeted program, but that’s not the case.”

There are also additional details about how CIA officials tried to mislead practically everyone about all of this. Of particular importance was how the CIA misled the Justice Department, which was in charge of determining if the program was legal. The DOJ did, in fact, approve the use of certain "interrogation methods" (which already seemed way too extreme), but it appears the CIA misled the DOJ about what it was actually doing from the very start:

[Defenders of the CIA's torture program] based their defense on a series of top-secret legal opinions issued by the Justice Department beginning in August 2002. At that time, the agency sought advice on whether using the harsh techniques on Zayn al Abidin Muhammad Husayn, a close aide to Osama bin Laden who went by the nom de guerre Abu Zubaydah, would violate U.S. law against torture.

The Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel found that the methods wouldn’t breach the law because those applying them didn’t have the specific intent of inflicting severe pain or suffering.

The Senate report, however, concluded that the Justice Department’s legal analyses were based on flawed information provided by the CIA, which prevented a proper evaluation of the program’s legality.

“The CIA repeatedly provided inaccurate information to the Department of Justice, impeding a proper legal analysis of the CIA’s Detention and Interrogation Program,” the report found.

All of this seems consistent with earlier reports, but it's good to see more details coming out. Of course, we're still only seeing bits and pieces, which is why it would be better if the full report were released.

from the good-to-see dept

For many years, we highlighted how Spain was a country that actually had much more reasonable copyright laws, in that it did not try to blame third-party tool makers for the actions of their users. In the 2009/2010 time frame, there were a series of rulings that rejected concepts like secondary liability for tool makers, on the same basic principle as the US Supreme Court decided the Betamax case years ago: it's inappropriate to blame the tool/service maker for how the tool is used. If users are using a tool to infringe, that's not the fault of the tool maker.

Of course, the entertainment industry flipped out that Spain would have such reasonable copyright policies. They started a scorched earth campaign, insisting they would pull out of Spain entirely. And, of course, they whined to the USTR, which started putting Spain on the "naughty list" of the Special 301 report. US diplomats in Spain then started putting tremendous pressure on the Spanish government to pass draconian copyright laws. In fact, some of the State Department cables leaked via Wikileaks basically showed that the US entertainment industry wrote the law and handed it to the Spanish government, telling them to pass it.

Public opposition to the law was massive, and even the head of the Spanish Film Academy quit to protest the law, noting that the new law was anti-consumer and no way to embrace the future. And yet, in early 2012, under tremendous pressure, the Spanish government adopted the law. And, of course, because ratcheting up copyright laws never actually stops infringement, it was barely a year before the US entertainment industry kept on complaining.

While Spain was temporarily dropped from the Special 301 list, the legacy entertainment industry demanded it be put back on. So, once again, a year ago, the government started pushing even more draconian copyright laws, flat-out admitting that the only reason they were doing so was to try to stay off the USTR's Special 301 naughty list. And, of course, late last year, new more draconian copyright laws were put in place.

Given all that history, it's fascinating to see a new ruling concerning a Spanish file sharing software called Blubster. As TorrentFreak reports, after all those legal shenanigans by the legacy American entertainment industry, the Spanish courts still seem to recognize how ridiculous secondary liability is for the creators of tools. Despite a massive lawsuit from the record labels, a Madrid court of appeals has upheld a lower court decision that Blubster and related programs from MP2P Technologies are neutral and not liable for infringement. This is a huge victory not only for the company's founder, Pablo Soto, but for the Spanish public and basic common sense around copyright law:

“[Soto's] activity is not only neutral, and perfectly legal, moreover it is protected by article 38 of our Constitution,” the Court wrote in its ruling.

In case you're wondering, Article 38 of the Spanish Constitution protects "free enterprise within the framework of a market economy." The court rejected various theories brought by the labels, including the idea that file sharing software was "looting" or that it was "unfair competition." It noted that since MP2P wasn't in the recording business, it wasn't "unfair competition" and, importantly, that it's simply ridiculous to blame the service provider for the actions of its users.

Of course, given the history we outlined in the first few paragraphs, it doesn't take much of a fortune teller to predict what's likely to happen next. Expect the pressure to ratchet up, yet again, for another change to Spanish copyright law.

from the officer-safety-INTENSIFIES dept

The US government's promise to give everyone affordable healthcare coverage and an armored vehicle in every law enforcement agency's garage continues to come to fruition. Sure, the healthcare thing may have hit multiple technical snags during rollout, but the assault-rifles-and-assault-vehicles part is swiftly turning every police chief and sheriff's domain into Kabul Lite™.

Tuesday night, in a four to one decision, the Washington City Council approved Police Chief Greg Goodman's request for a "demilitarized" MRAP or Mine Resistant Ambush Protected troop transport...

MRAPs typically cost about $500,000. [Another article puts the prices at $733,000.] Washington Police are getting theirs for free under a U.S. Defense Department program that gives surplus military equipment to law enforcement. Washington Police said the only cost will be the transportation fee to bring vehicle up from Texas.

Nothing like a free armored personnel carrier, just the sort of thing a bustling metropolis of 7,000 needs, at least according to the police chief.

Chief Goodman calls the MRAP a big win for his officers’ safety.

I would think so, considering he can probably fit his entire police force into it. Goodman envisions it rolling up at a local school or workplace in the unlikely event that an "active shooter" situation develops. Not only that, but Chief Goodman apparently feels his department can no longer afford to be without this sort of protection based, again, on another outlying incident.

The chief said he saw the need for an MRAP in 2011, when Keokuk County Sgt. Eric Stein was shot and killed by a gunman. Goodman believes the armored vehicle might have allowed police to approach the home in safety from gunfire and use non-lethal means to subdue the shooter.

Eric Stein was shot during a four-hour standoff with a resident of Sigourney, Iowa, home to a little over 2,000 Iowans. Goodman seems to believe this sort of threat is persistent (even in Washington, Iowa), despite the fact that Stein became only the second peace officer killed in Iowa in nearly thirty years (September 1985).

But Washington now has an MRAP to deal with its crime "problem," which include three murders since 2001. Oddly, the grant money isn't going towards outfitting the town's 7,000 citizens with bulletproof vests, despite it apparently being at least three times as dangerous to be a member of the general public.

"How do we know, having a six-wheel armored vehicle, it's going to be on the site when the bullet's shot that's going to do the injury?" Shellmyer said.

That's it. You don't know. So to be safe, you take it everywhere. The MRAP will likely be deployed to handle any situation where officers believe they might encounter resistance, which will turn every banal warrant service into a quasi-military operation. You don't get something like this and not use it. Chief Goodman says it will be "rarely used," but plans are already in place to contact other local law enforcement agencies to spread the MRAP around and, in the process, have these entities contribute to the upkeep.

Many people are wary of militarizing police forces, a number which includes a vast amount of law-abiding citizens. The government, however, seems perfectly willing to make law enforcement agencies virtually indistinguishable from the armed forces by giving away military guns, equipment and vehicles to any entity that's willing to check the box next to "active shooter" (or "terrorism") on the request form.

The vehicles and weaponry will be put into use frequently, contrary to the assertions of small town law enforcement officials, and this escalation -- during a time when crime rates continue to fall -- will push these same officials to misrepresent and exaggerate the dangers they face in order to keep playing their martial law dress-up game.

The hope, of course, was that the court might address the ridiculousness of the charge and the huge problems of the CFAA, which currently permits the government to go after pretty much anyone who uses a computer in a way they don't like. Instead, the conviction was tossed for being in the wrong venue:

Although this appeal raises a number of complex and novel issues that are of great public importance in our increasingly interconnected age, we find it necessary to reach only one that has been fundamental since our country’s founding: venue.

But, while the ruling punts on the CFAA, it raises some issues in its venue analysis that could themselves have a wider impact. Weev was prosecuted in New Jersey based on the flimsy rationale that New Jersey residents were affected by the security flaw exposure (but really because New Jersey has its own anti-hacking laws, and the DOJ was able to pursue a harsher punishment if the CFAA intersected with state laws). But the appeals court found that, since none of the allegedly illegal activities undertaken by weev happened in New Jersey, this was inappropriate:

New Jersey was not the site of either essential conduct element. The evidence at trial demonstrated that the accessed AT&T servers were located in Dallas, Texas, and Atlanta, Georgia. In addition, during the time that the conspiracy began, continued, and ended, Spitler was obtaining information in San Francisco, California, and Auernheimer was assisting him from Fayetteville, Arkansas. No protected computer was accessed and no data was obtained in New Jersey.

Since the question of venue is still very muddy when it comes to the internet, this likely isn't the last we'll be hearing about this ruling, and its impact on other cases could prove interesting. It's also likely not an end to weev's story, and certainly not an end to government abuse of the CFAA. But, for now and at the very least, it says that if the DOJ is going to try to throw you in jail for the crime of Vaguely Misusing A Computer While Being Kind Of A Jerk, it at least has to do it in the correct venue instead of going fishing for the most favorable one.

Update: As noted in the First Word comment below, the ruling did make mention of the fact that no crime had been clearly established, which suggests that if the court had addressed the bigger questions about the charge, it may not have gone well for the DOJ. For now, we'll have to be satisfied with a non-binding footnote.

from the because-that's-not-infringement dept

Earlier this week the MPAA filed a very questionable lawsuit against Megaupload, recognizing that the statute of limitations would run out in a few months. And just days later, the RIAA has followed suit with a nearly identical filing. While they're done by two different law firms, the similarities between the lawsuits are uncanny -- including the numerous defective (to dangerous) attempts to reinterpret copyright way beyond what the law actually says. We already covered why most of these theories are defective, but let's look at some similarities between the filings. I mean, honestly, if the RIAA and MPAA weren't so close, and if it were possible to claim copyright on legal filings (as some do assert), you'd think that the MPAA attorneys might have a claim on the RIAA's attorneys for copying their work. One wonders how much the RIAA's lawyers charged to basically rearranged some words in the MPAA's filing.

Let's start at the beginning. Here's how the MPAA describes what Megaupload does:

Megaupload amassed the millions of popular content files that it hosted on its
servers and offered to the public for download by openly encouraging and paying users to upload
these files. Any Internet user who went to the Megaupload website could upload a computer file,
whether or not the user registered as a member. When the upload was completed, Megaupload
reproduced the file on at least one computer server it controlled and provided the user with a
Uniform Resource Locator ("URL")"link" beginning with "megaupload.com." The uploader
could then propagate the link broadly over the Internet, so that anyone interested in downloading
or otherwise accessing a copy ofthe file could easily find it on Megaupload's servers.

Any user who had the URL link could access and download the associated
content from Megaupload's servers. By "clicking" the URL link (or copying it into any web
browser), the user was taken to a "download page" on the Megaupload website that allowed the
user to download a copy of the file from a computer server controlled by defendants.

And the RIAA's version:

Beginning in late 2005 and continuing at least to January 2012 when Defendants were indicted, Megaupload amassed the millions of popular content files that it hosted on its servers and offered to the public for download by openly encouraging users to upload these files. Until mid-2011, Megaupload went so far as to actually pay its users to do this. Any Internet users who went to the Megaupload website could upload content files, regardless of whether the users registered as members. Upon completion of the uploads, Megaupload reproduced each file on at least one computer server it controlled and provided the users with a Uniform Resource Locator ("URL") "link" beginning with "megaupload.com" for each uploaded file. The uploading users could then propagate the links broadly over the Internet, so that anyone interested in downloading or otherwise accessing copies of the files could easily find them on Megaupload’s servers.

Users in possession of the Megaupload URL links could access and download the associated content from Megaupload's servers. By "clicking" the URL links (or copying them into any web browser), users were taken to a "download page" on the Megaupload website that allowed users to download the content, including Plaintiffs’ recorded music, from computer servers controlled by Defendants.

Yeah. That's pretty damn similar, including numerous identical phrases. Someone's copying something. Okay, how about the lack of a search (which, as we noted previously, is ridiculous, since Napster got in trouble for having a search, and now everyone's saying that not having a search is just as damning). Here's the MPAA:

To conceal the scope of infringennent occurring on the Megaupload website,
defendants did not provide users with a searchable index of files available for download from the
Megaupload website (although defendants themselves had access to such an index). Instead,
defendants relied on numerous third party "linking" sites to host, organize, and promote URL
links to Megaupload-hosted infringing content, including plaintiffs' copyrighted works. Such
linking sites made infringing content broadly and easily accessible to users by maintaining an
index of links to content files organized by category and/or alphabetically by titles of the
copyrighted work; some such linking sites also offered search boxes where users could enter
queries quickly to find the content they wanted. Many of these linking sites were blatant pirate
sites, hosting thousands of links to infringing material. Any visitor could quickly see the
widespread availability on many linking sites of links to infringing content on Megaupload.
Defendants knew of this open infringement on pirate linking sites and closely tracked the traffic
from those sites to Megaupload. Furthermore, defendants provided financial incentives for
premium users to post links to these sites through the Uploader Rewards program.

Okay, and the RIAA version:

To conceal the scope of infringement occurring on the Megaupload website, Defendants did not provide users with a searchable index of files available for download from the site (although Defendants themselves had access to such an index). Instead, Defendants relied on numerous third party "linking" sites to host, organize, and promote URL links to Megaupload-hosted infringing content, including Plaintiffs' copyrighted works. Such linking sites made infringing content broadly and easily accessible to users by maintaining an index of links to content files organized by category and/or alphabetically by titles of the copyrighted work; some such linking sites also offered search boxes where users could enter queries quickly to find the content that they sought. Many of these linking sites were blatant pirate sites, hosting thousands of links to infringing material. Several of these linking sites exclusively offered Megaupload links. Any visitor could quickly see the widespread availability on many linking sites of links to infringing content on Megaupload. Defendants knew of this open infringement on pirate linking sites and closely tracked the traffic from those sites to Megaupload. Defendants also knowingly interacted with users of linking sites and have visited such sites themselves. Defendants also provided financial incentives for premium users to post links to these sites through the Uploader Rewards program.

Right. So those two paragraphs are identical, except the RIAA adds in two extra sentences about the linking sites. It goes on and on like this, with both filings clearly working off of either each other or the DOJ indictment, which they're copy/pasting into their own filing and fussing with a word or two here or there. Here's just one more example. Both filings claim that Megaupload can't be considered a "cloud storage" site because it would delete unpopular files. Here's the MPAA's version of this:

Contrary to some of defendants' public assertions, Megaupload was not designed
to be a private data storage provider. Users without premium subscriptions were restricted not
only in their downloading capabilities, but also in their ability to store files on the site. Any
content they uploaded would be deleted if it was not also downloaded within a certain period of
time -- after 21 days in the case of unregistered, anonymous users and after 90 days in the case of
registered users who were not premium subscribers. Only premium subscribers (estimated to be
1% of users) could use Megaupload for long-term file storage.

And the RIAA's nearly identical text:

Megaupload was in no respect designed to be a private data storage provider. Users without premium subscriptions were restricted not only in their downloading capabilities, but also in their ability to store files on the site. Any content that users uploaded would be deleted if it was not also downloaded within a certain period of time--after 21 days in the case of unregistered, anonymous users, and after 90 days in the case of registered users who were not premium subscribers. Only premium subscribers (estimated to be one percent of users) could use Megaupload for long-term file storage.

Of course, Kim Dotcom has now refuted this claim, saying that content that was unpopular was not deleted from Megaupload.

However, even beyond that, I fail to see how having a service like this that deletes unpopular content suddenly disqualifies it from being a legitimate service. Lots of other legitimate services have similar terms. While it appears to have recently changed this, the popular image sharing site Imgur (which we use at Techdirt) used to have a very similar clause, saying that "images that are not viewed for 6 months may be removed. However, images with pro accounts can only be removed by you." That doesn't mean they were not a legitimate service.

Nor does it mean it's not a "cloud" service. Different cloud services serve different markets, and services like Megaupload (and Imgur) tend to be more focused on the immediate sharing of content (not necessarily infringing content). In fact, if you look back at the origins of Megaupload, it initially resembled services like the old "YouSendIt," which were focused on making it easier for people to move any file from one person to another. That's not encouraging infringement, it's encouraging being able to transport a digital file it's completely neutral to whether or not the content is or is not infringing.

Either way, the RIAA's lawsuit is a near carbon copy of the MPAA's, and is just as faulty in its reasoning. It's nothing more than a blatant pile on in the attempt to twist copyright laws to their liking.

from the because-'on-a-computer' dept

Some very interesting claims arose from oral arguments related to a case that has been kicked around the court system for a couple of years now. The case is People v. Golb, one that arose out of an extended disagreement between two college professors (Norman Golb of the University of Chicago and Lawrence Schiffman of NYU) over the origins of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

One thing led to another… which then (inexplicably) led to Norman Golb's son, Raphael, creating more than 50 online aliases to create a ground swell of support for his father's views… which then (even more inexplicably) led to Raphael Golb impersonating Lawrence Schiffman (via email) in order to portray Schiffman as a plagiarist -- using Schiffman's own email address. It is this Golb the People have a problem with.

(Even more inexplicably, this somehow also led to a lawyer claiming to represent Schiffman sending legal threats to bloggers who had covered the case, asserting that their "criminal postings" needed to be taken down immediately. Clifford A Rieders Esq. could not have picked a worst trio of bloggers to send baseless legal threats to: Scott Greenfield of Simple Justice, Eugene Volokh of the Volokh Conspiracy and Ken White of Popehat. Lessons were indubitably learned.)

In January of 2013, the court found that the younger Golb's First Amendment rights had not been violated during his prosecution for impersonating Schiffman in order to discredit him.

Defendant’s convictions arise out of his use of emails to impersonate actual persons. Nothing in this prosecution, or in the court’s jury charge, violated defendant’s First Amendment or other constitutional rights… Among other things, defendant sent emails in which one of his father’s rivals purportedly admitted to acts of plagiarism…

Defendant was not prosecuted for the content of any of the emails, but only for giving the false impression that his victims were the actual authors of the emails. The First Amendment protects the right to criticize another person, but it does not permit anyone to give an intentionally false impression that the source of the message is that other person (see SMJ Group, Inc. v 417 Lafayette Restaurant LLC, 439 F Supp 2d 281 (SD NY 2006]).

I’ve blogged before about the danger of criminal harassment laws, when they are extended beyond offensive speech to one particular unwilling person — the traditional telephone harassment example — and apply instead to speech about a person. (See posts here and here, as well as this law review article, which starts by concrete examples of how such laws have been used.) And the prosecutor’s statement in this argument helps illustrate just how broadly prosecutors can read such laws.

Eugene Volokh quotes part of the oral arguments presented April 2nd. Here's the lead-up and the relevant quote, both of which highlight the prosecutor's (Vincent Rivellese) ridiculous stance, as well as the judges' incredulity at what's being claimed.

CHIEF JUDGE LIPPMAN: Is this aggravated harassment or is this just annoying behavior? MR. RIVELLESE: Well, it's both, that's for sure. What's the - - - CHIEF JUDGE LIPPMAN: Well, but is it technically a crime? Can it be in this kind of - - - MR. RIVELLESE: Yes. CHIEF JUDGE LIPPMAN: Isn't that a little bit overbroad? MR. RIVELLESE: No. CHIEF JUDGE LIPPMAN: No? Go ahead. Why not? MR. RIVELLESE: This - - - this is the closest argument obviously in the case, but the aggravated harassment involves an intent to harass, annoy or alarm, and it's - - - it's got an intent that's required. It's also got the likelihood of harassing or alarming the recipients or the victims. It's also got - - - JUDGE SMITH: If I - - - if I ask you a question that I expect to be an annoying question, and is likely to be an annoying question, am I committing a misdemeanor by asking the question? MR. RIVELLESE: No, because there's no writing. The aggravated harassment - - - JUDGE SMITH: Oh, but - - - oh, but if I submitted the question in writing, it would be a misdemeanor? MR. RIVELLESE: Well, if - - - if you conveyed to somebody. So if you e-mailed somebody or you wrote a letter - - - JUDGE SMITH: Really? Really?

The delineation is obviously foggy if saying something is no crime, but writing it down is. Further on:

JUDGE SMITH: If I e-mail someone an annoying question, I get a year? MR. RIVELLESE: Well, it has to be likely to annoy, harass, or alarm - - - CHIEF JUDGE LIPPMAN: So if Judge Smith put what he's asking you now in writing, this is a crime? MR. RIVELLESE: I'm not annoyed. I'm not annoyed. So I'm fine. CHIEF JUDGE LIPPMAN: Oh, okay, you're not annoyed. Okay. It might have been mis - - - JUDGE SMITH: Give me - - - give me time. MR. RIVELLESE: The proper discussion - - - JUDGE ABDUS-SALAAM: Counsel, is it that subjective that the person who receives the question has to feel that it's annoying? MR. RIVELLESE: Well, no, it is - - - it's reasonableness. JUDGE ABDUS-SALAAM: It has to have an objective right.

So it would appear. Objective but not subjective, but in this case, with the impersonation of another person, Rivellese seems to feel that it's actually more a subjective problem, especially when it's not even the victim who's being directly targeted. And the "intent to annoy and alarm" exception to the First Amendment should be enforced evenif the speech is about a person rather than directed at a person.

JUDGE PIGOTT: But as a third - - - you're saying there can be a third-party aggravated harassment. MR. RIVELLESE: Yes, if still - - - there's still an intended victim. JUDGE PIGOTT: So if - - - well, that's I - - - you get - - - you get three college kids - - - you get some college kid who write - - - who e-mails the girlfriend of his roommate saying, you know, he really is a useless person. Is that aggravated harassment with respect to the victim, boyfriend/roommate? MR. RIVELLESE: Yes, because it's got - - - JUDGE PIGOTT: Really? MR. RIVELLESE: It meets all the elements. It does not require that the person that you send the communication to is the same person that you intend to harass, annoy and alarm.

This is what alarms Volokh. The narrow targeting of the First Amendment exceptions are being broadly read by prosecutors. This is the sort of expansion -- one that pushes behavior normally subject only to civil actions into criminal territory -- that invariably makes its way into newly-crafted laws targeting online behavior.

Here's what Volokh originally said about the decision that's now being appealed.

Intentionally trying to make others believe that someone did something (write an e-mail) that he did not inflicts specific harm on that other person, whether by harming his reputation or at least by making others think that he believes something that he doesn’t (which will often be civilly actionable under the false light tort). To be sure, that usually leads to civil liability, but nothing in the Court’s decision suggests that criminal liability in such cases is impermissible, especially when the law is limited to relatively clearly identifiable falsehoods, such as falsely claiming to be someone you are not.

That's much more limited than what the prosecutor's arguing. His argument removes the limitations (falsehoods and false impersonation) and suggests that nearly any attempt to harass or annoy someone is a criminal offense. This is on top of his claim that there's a clear delineation between oral and written speech, with the latter being the more "criminal" of the two. It's this sort of broad reading that makes nearly every new cyberbullying/harassment law a handy new tool to criminalize a vast swath of online behavior.

(3) NTIS is tasked with collecting and distributing government-funded scientific, technical, engineering, and business-related information and reports. (4) GAO found that NTIS sold only 8 percent of the 2,500,000 reports in its collection between 1995 and 2000. (5) A November 2012 GAO review of NTIS made the following conclusions:

(A) 'Of the reports added to NTIS's repository during fiscal years 1990 through 2011, GAO estimates that approximately 74 percent were readily available from other public sources.'(B) 'These reports were often available either from the issuing organization's website, the Federal Internet portal (http://www.USA.gov) or from another source located through a web search.'(C) 'The source that most often had the report [GAO] was searching for was another website located through http://www.Google.com.'(D) '95 percent of the reports available from sources other than NTIS were available free of charge.'

(6) No Federal agency should use taxpayer dollars to purchase a report from the National Technical Information Service that is available through the Internet for free.

And here's the punchline:

SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.

This Act may be cited as the 'Let Me Google That For You Act.'

Someone had fun cranking out this "Short Title."

As the bill points out, it was suggested by the Secretary of Commerce in 1999 that the NTIS would eventually outlive its usefulness. According to the GAO's 2012 findings, that sell-by date was reached more than a decade ago.

NTIS product expenditures exceeded revenues for 10 out of the past 11 fiscal years.

The "Let Me Google That For You" Act calls for the repeal of the 1988 National Technical Information Act and the disbandment of the agency itself, with the redistribution of whichever of its duties are still deemed essential to the Commerce Department.

It's not often you get the chance to watch an extraneous government agency be put down and even rarer still under a snarky, incisive, short title. This is for the best. As we've seen all too frequently, time marches on, swiftly distancing itself from the glacial pace of government innovation.

from the see-how-GREAT-we-are-at-STUFF! dept

The DOJ, via its Deputy Assistant Attorney General, has sent a memo to FISC Judge Reggie Walton, informing him of just how compliant the agency has been during the last couple of months as conflicting orders over the retention of bulk record data went flying as a result of multiple BR-related lawsuits.

The DOJ, speaking for the NSA and FBI (who actually collect the collections), went from one court to the other (the Northern District Court of California and the FISA Court), trying to figure out whether it would be destroying aged-off data or holding onto it. It was hard to discern which route the DOJ preferred to take, but FISA Judge Walton managed to sniff out the agency's true intentions, calling them out for not only failing to inform the FISA court of standing retention orders but also attempting to talk the involved plaintiffs from passing this information along to the involved courts.

Given these actions, it would appear the DOJ preferred to dump the data rather than have it actually appear in court as evidence. But Judge Walton, along with the district court, prevented that. The DOJ's letter to Judge Walton conveniently glosses over its misconduct, instead portraying the agency as a conscientious party doing the best it could under the circumstances.

The DOJ's letter notes that it managed to restrain itself from destroying any aged-off data while waiting for the conflicting orders to be settled (March 5 - March 12), which means the BR data still has a chance to be used in court. According to the letter, this retained data is being held separately from the rest of the bulk collections, which means it can't be accessed by analysts searching the metadata. Supposedly, the NSA will only be allowed to peek in on the retained data to verify it's all still present and accounted for.

While this sort of hi-gloss portrayal is to be expected from an agency that probably still believes it did nothing wrong, it's rather audacious of the DOJ to attempt to pass this narrative off to the same judge that called it out for misleading the FISA court and attempting to bury plaintiffs' concerns.

from the leaked-birth-certificate-confirms! dept

One of the great unwritten rules of parenthood is that the right to name your offspring should be treated as a privilege. The temptation is to give the child a "unique" name that sets him or her as far apart for his/her eventual peers as humanly possible, thus living up to the common parental delusion that each child is its own special flower, unlike the millions born before it or after it.

Unfortunately, a "unique" name is often just an unwieldy name, if not simply embarrassing. And the unlucky child has to bear that clumsy moniker until he or she hits the legal paperwork-filing age and changes it to something that won't trigger an inadvertent laugh from college staff and potential employers. The intervening years will pass excruciatingly slowly as the child awkwardly orbits his peers like a gatecrasher at a menage a trois, trying desperately to find somewhere to fit in. This is generally made worse by the "unique" parents, who somehow view intense shunning as more "evidence" of their child's one-in-a-million qualities.

Hajar Hamalaw wanted to name his son, who was born on March 14th, after the online whistleblowing platform as it “changed the world”, the Passauer Neue Presse reported.

But the 28-year-old failed to get the name past authorities in Passau, Bavaria.

Hamalaw's heart is in the right place, at least in terms of having a decent reason to name his new child "Wikileaks." But first he had to convince local officials, which went just about as well as could be expected from any place where newborns' names get run past local officials.

But Wikileaks did not make it onto the birth certificate. "The registrar said that this was not a first name. He thought it was a series or TV show," said Hamalaw.

Beyond the out-of-touch registrar, there's another rule on the books that keeps Passau parents from saddling their offspring with ridiculous names.

A spokesperson for the town of Passau said the decision by the registry office was based on legal rulings which state a child’s name should not be granted if it could endanger their welfare.

I don't agree that any government entity should keep you from naming your child whatever you want, but if you're going to have a stupid rule like this, at least have one that looks out for the child's best interests. When "Dako" (the "Plan B" name, apparently) hits legal age, he'll have the option to change his name to "Wikileaks" or "Full Metal Havok More Sexy N Intelligent Than Spock And All The Superheroes Combined With Frostnova" if he'd like and no one, not even a person who thinks "Wikileaks" went downhill after its third season, will be able to stop him. But until then, he's got several years of pre- and post-pubescent awkwardness to live through that will have nothing at all to do with his father's love for leaked documents.